Since its inception, the Florida Center for Heterocyclic Compounds, recognized throughout the world to be the pre-eminent location and resource for heterocyclic chemistry, has provided service to UF and the scientific community in research, publishing and teaching. Heterocyclic chemistry constantly grows in scope and importance; over 80 percent of the some 108 distinct chemical entities known are heterocycles, and such compounds constitute the core of all life processes, controlling hereditary information through nucleic acids and evolution through mutations. Heterocycles are also dominant in photography and reprographics, agrochemicals, dyestuffs, many additives and diverse polymers, and they are a mainstay of pharmaceutical and biotechnological research.

The activities of the Center are carried out by its current faculty members, primarily from the Department of Chemistry. Most chemical texts discuss heterocycles in an unsystematic manner, and many students finish their graduate studies lacking an adequate background in the field. In contrast, most organic chemistry related industrial positions require at least some familiarity with heterocycles. A major role of the Center for Heterocyclic Compounds is to help alleviate these difficulties by offering advice, help, and training. Such training has been provided by the Center to more than 500 long and medium stay visitors from more than 50 countries. The Center has had research contracts with around 100 private companies and industrial organizations including a significant number outside the United States. These collaborations have been of two main types: (i) the synthesis of interesting compounds and (ii) the exploration of relationships between structure and physical, biological and technological properties. Contracts supporting this work awarded to members of the Center have brought in over 30 million dollars over the last 20 years.

Current aims to internationalize UF benefit from the Center’s wide-ranging world-wide connections. The journal “Arkivoc,” which is run by the Center in association with the not-for-profit foundation, Arkat USA Inc., provides a prime example of how open access journals can be organized in a very cost-effective manner to benefit scientists throughout the world. Members of the Center have made international trips to lecture at over 500 universities, other research institutions and conferences throughout the globe. Over 1,000 publications by Center members have brought a high degree of visibility to the chemical sciences at UF.

Since 2000 the annual Florida Heterocyclic Conferences held during the Spring Break have attracted a wide range of chemists from all over the world. Each year a dozen plenary lectures are given by outstanding organic chemists, together with invited lectures, short courses on heterocyclic synthetic topics and poster presentations. During the first eleven conferences, some 2000 participants benefited scientifically and left with enhanced opinions of the University of Florida.

The Center operates an elemental analysis facility and the “Cindex” collection of commercial compounds. Users of these services have included Materials and Engineering Sciences, Environmental Horticulture, IFAS and USDA as well as many research groups in the Department of Chemistry. The Center’s ARKIVE collection of 35,000 chemical entities, many of them unique, is available for purchase throughout the world and we have supplied over 10,000 specimens to more than 400 different companies, government agencies and other research groups.

I believe you are all aware that we run a CHN combustion analysis service.

In addition, we have two microwave synthesizers and are happy to help colleagues if they need to try microwave assistance for their reactions.

We have a large specimen collection which has been assembled over the years and consists of some 35,000 different compounds. These constitute our "Arkive" database, and further details on how to access this (you can search the database either by exact structure or substructure) please go to http://www.ark.chem.ufl.edu/Index.asp?View=Arkive_Database.asp (you can also search these compounds using SciFinder scholar). We sell these compounds all over the world and the money is a useful supplement to our research funds. If you find something you would like to have for your research, please send an inquiry by e-mail to "compounds@chem.ufl.edu."

In addition, we have approximately 8,000 commercially available compounds which we have purchased over the years. When safe, we keep the unused amounts for further experimentation. This constitutes our Cindex collection, and again is searchable by structure or substructure. If you need a small amount of a particular compound or of a particular class of compounds, you can easily search by going to www.ark.chem.ufl.edu (under the software menu you can find the database and the instructions on how to use it) to see whether we have the precise compound or something like it available. If you find something that you would like to have, please send an inquiry to Judit by e-mail at JKovacs@chem.ufl.edu or in person at Sisler Hall, room 228 or room 212.

We have two Discover microwave synthesizers from CEM Corporation. This new technology has allowed our group members to run reactions with shorter times, improved purity and yields.

One of the microwaves has been upgraded to Discover SPS for solid phase peptide synthesis. The second is a Discover BenchMate with features that allow the performance of atmospheric (up to 125-mL flask) and pressurized (10-mL) reactions.